Page 39

CHAPTER 39

W hen I got out of the SUV, Alex Müller got out with me.

“Uh, where are you going?” I asked.

“Master Adolphus said I can use the guest room. I live in Lausanne, so it’s a bit far to go home tonight.”

I shrugged. “Okay. I guess if you don’t get fried, then the Master has modified the wards for you.”

He grinned at me and managed to cross the threshold intact, so I decided he was telling the truth. We trooped upstairs. Sima sat in front of my door and immediately reacted to Alex, sniffing him and giving him a thorough inspection. She then turned back to me, expecting me to open my bedroom door.

I showed Alex the room across from mine. “I assume he means this room.”

“You were impressive tonight,” he said.

“Verner Karlsson’s essence is rather unique. It’s unlikely I could get it mixed up with someone else’s. And it’s very strong. Good night.”

Once in my room, I shed my clothes as quickly as I could and jumped into the shower, washing my hair. The smell of vamp clung to me from the hours together in that SUV.

I crawled into bed, and Sima leapt up and head-butted me. I got back up, grabbed some treats from the jar, gave them to her, and she finally let me fall asleep.

It seemed my alarm went off almost immediately, but the sunlight through the curtains told me it was time to get up. I clumped downstairs and dropped into the seat at my table. Frau Buckner appeared beside me as if by magic.

“Breakfast?”

“Yes, please. Is the Master up yet?”

“I’ll send him to see you.”

About ten minutes later, the Master came down the stairs with Alex, and they found seats at my table. Master Adolphus raised an eyebrow to me in question.

“Yeah, I found him. They led us on a merry chase—halfway to Munich and back— but he’s at the Müller family home here in Zürich.”

“So, how are they going to get him out?”

“Good question. The place is guarded by so many Knights and police they’re tripping over each other. I’m thinking the best way of rescuing him is the way he was captured—during daylight.”

Alex showed some surprise at that, but the Master merely nodded.

“That would preclude a strigoi rescue,” Alex said.

“Not entirely. I can cover Nicola and Karlsson with a light-tight shield.”

“Why take Nicola at all?”

“Are you going to carry him? Someone will have to, and I’m just a frail damsel. Nicola could probably carry an ox, and if I have to pick a strigoi to trust, she’s it.”

The Master snorted a laugh.

“What I want to do today is scout the place in daylight,” I said. “Then when Nicola hauls her ass out of bed tonight, we can devise a plan.”

Captain Le Pen was summoned and took us back to the fancy neighborhood of the Müller home on the northern outskirts of the city. Alex and I—covered by an invisibility glamor—scouted out the house.

“Security features?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think they depend on wards casted by my grandfather and great-grandfather. I was taught how to renew them. I assume Nik does that now. No one in their right mind would depend on Roland to do anything correctly.”

“Not a fan of your little brother?”

“He’s an idiot.”

“So, you can carve a hole in the wards to get us in?” I asked.

He nodded. “Or crash them entirely. Probably not a bad idea if we have some firepower backing us up. I wouldn’t bank on getting in and out without being discovered. I believe in Luck, but she’s a fickle goddess.”

Alex told me the garage entrance on the upper side of the house actually led to a large space carved into the hill, with room for six vehicles.

“There’s also some storage space,” he said.

“So, that’s probably where they’re keeping Verner.”

“It would make sense.”

“Is Nikolas also an idiot?” I asked. “Does he really think the Church is going to let him become king of the world?”

Alex shook his head. “No, but he’s not as smart as he thinks he is.”

I chuckled. “No one is as smart as he thinks he is.”

Alex grinned and nodded. “He’s got something up his sleeve. Maybe some backroom deal with someone in the Church hierarchy. But to my knowledge, he’s never met the Prelate, and I would tend to doubt the Prelate even knows who he is. You’re a little too young to remember the last time the Knights tried to conquer the western world. But they have factions within the Church just as the Guild does. Who knows how everything lines up?”

“How close are you to Nik?” I asked.

“We’re only two years apart, so we grew up together. Until he became infatuated with the idea of a magiocracy, we were fairly close. But I never had delusions of grandeur, or wanted to rule the world. I’ve told him that he’s not as clever as he thinks he is, but he just replies that I’m jealous of his success.”

“What do you do? I mean, when you’re not rescuing ancient strigoi.”

“I’m a structural engineer. I work for a consulting company, so I do quite a bit of traveling.”

“Not interested in the family business?”

He grinned. “Not interested in working for Nikolas. Having a high-paying position handed to you is an easy way to start in life, but putting up with him for the next three hundred years doesn’t sound like a good trade off.”

“And what would happen if Nik dies?”

“I don’t know. I’d probably keep most of the current management—they’re competent, and the company doesn’t really depend on Nik. He’s consumed by his political aspirations.” He shrugged. “I might sell it off. I’m just not interested.”

We trekked back to where Captain Le Pen waited for us, and he took us back to Master Adolphus’s house. On our way, we stopped at a vantage point where we could look down across the river at the Langstrasse. It was obvious where the strigoi enclave started. It looked like pictures I’d seen of bombed-out cities from a war.

“It does look very much like Dresden or Berlin when I saw them after the war,” Captain Le Pen said in response to my observation. “A lot of people are probably happy about that. It frees up some very valuable land in the heart of the city. Even though legally strigoi aren’t people—or citizens—no one wants to upset the apple cart and challenge their property rights. In a society as old as ours, too many people’s claim to ancestral property might be difficult to prove.” His mouth twisted into a rueful grin. “But if the strigoi who have lived there for the past two hundred years are no longer there…”

Le Pen appeared to be around forty years old. It was a bit jarring when he mentioned something that happened sixty years earlier, but I was getting used to that sort of thing when I was around mages. It always made me feel uncomfortable to think about living for centuries. I was so young compared to most of the people I was around.

“In my research on Nikolas, I learned that he’s receiving a lot of funding from companies and individuals engaged in property development,” I said.

“Wouldn’t surprise me at all,” Alex said.

I ate a small lunch when I got home, then took a four-hour nap. I didn’t expect to get much sleep that night.

* * *

N icola and a small guard of about thirty strigoi showed up around nine o’clock in the evening. I eyed them standing around the Platz and hanging out on the rooftops, then said, “Traveling light?”

“I left the other three or four battalions outside the Aldstadt . No need to antagonize the natives.”

Master Adolphus chuckled.

We sat around the large table in the room off the Master’s office, where Alex and I laid out our plan. I became more nervous as time passed. The expression on Nicola’s face didn’t change at all.

When we finished presenting the plan, everyone sat silently for a while, then Nicola said, “You’re mad.”

I waited for a minute or so, then said, “For living in a city full of people-eating monsters? Yeah, I agree. Master Adolphus tried to send me back to the States, but I guess I’m just some kind of adrenaline junkie.”

She turned a baleful eye on me, letting me know my flippancy wasn’t appreciated.

“Okay, my plan is mad. No argument from me. Next suggestion?”

Everyone looked around at everyone else. Once, Nicola opened her mouth, then shut it again. Master Adolphus leaned back in his chair and studied each person in turn.

Eventually, Nicola leaned forward and looked back and forth between Alex and me. “Do you really think this will work?”

Alex took a deep breath, then said, “I think it has a chance. We’re assuming he’s in the garage or the basement. If we actually have to search the house, it will take too long, and we’ll have a problem.” He didn’t tell her that one of his suggestions was that, if worse came to worst, we would get out and blow the place up. It didn’t solve her problem, but we could hope that Nikolas was in the building. Blowing it up was fairly easy if we were inside the wards, especially since we had a ley line mage on our side.

She nodded. “I don’t have any better suggestions, and even if it doesn’t work, it saves the lives of my followers.”

“But probably not yours,” Alex said.

“Probably not. But if we don’t find Verner, my probability of meeting my final death is very high no matter how I calculate it. At least three of Verner’s children—far older than I am—will waste no time in ensuring I am no longer a threat to them.”